Well, at long last I have acquired an instrument for my first restoration project (from good old Ebay) and having collected the said box from sunny Yorkshire, this is what I have before me.

It’s turned out to be a bit of a surprise really, because when I originally looked at the Ebay picture it just looked like a basic 2 voice (two treble reed sets) box, but when I saw it in the flesh for the first time, it was clear by it’s weight that there was more to the instrument than I had thought and sure enough when I finally got it home and opened it up I discovered that it was indeed a three voice instrument with five sets in the bass.

It does seem to have one strange quirk however, and that is the row of counter bass buttons appear to be one position out of place – that is to say that the fundamental bass note of C should have a counter bass of E but on this instrument, it is B and this is replicated throughout the bass mechanism i.e. where the counter bass for A should be C# it is in fact G# – so it looks like this may have been a custom built instrument unless there is someone out there that can maybe throw some light onto the matter

The other thing was that ‘Sonora’ is not a name I am familiar with but once again, as soon as I had opened the instrument I found a manufacturers label showing the name Cav. Sante Crucianelli & Figli so hopefully, I will be able to do some research and find out a little more about it’s origins?

Manufacturers Label

The next step is a complete strip down and a full report on my findings so keep an eye out for that.